Shiver
by pricecheckgreen
Summary: Nora wakes up.
1. Chapter 1

When people close their eyes, it's meant to block out all of the light, close off the rest of the world from their perceptions for a moment of rest. But eyelids are thin little things, and light gets through anyway—there's no real escaping the world, just the aspects of it that give the free floating emotion and sensation form. For years her mind has been taking in a blue, distorted tint, water filtered echoes of noise, and a chill on her skin, though she's not supposed to feel anything at all. Bizarre shapes cast shadows over the tank, sceneries change, sometimes vital signs fluctuate, but nothing _really_ through until the one evening everything breaks, a crack over the bubble like a sharp tack on a dry balloon, and here she is with years of nonconscious processing to make up for.

Gravity, sound, and movement come pouring in. There's a shattering in her ears, a horrifying _whoosh_, and she's falling over broken glass, vision blinded because the room is too, too bright, cords pulling at her wrists and ankles with a fountain of liquid sloshing around her. Her hair is heavy and damp, blonde tendrils plastered over her face and shoulders rather than suspended in silence with the rest of her. The pull of the ground bends her over what's left of the chamber, and she flops uselessly against the broken edges.

Rough gloves brush against her wet skin after a moment, a pressure on her back and sides lowering her down to cold tiles. Everything starts to come into focus and she's looking up at a blurred thing, a creature, or perhaps an astronaut? It hisses and moves in stiff, calculated motions, no face in sight but a definite body shape that looks human enough. She feels naked in her soaked clothes and wishes for a similar shell.

She tries to reach a hand up to its opaque, fogged viewing window, but her arms are weak and only get to its glowing tube infused abdomen before she realizes that _there is no air_ and she can't _breathe._

Her body is numb to the burn of oxygen deprivation, but she feels her chest heaving, and chokes out droplets of pale blue fluid that dribble down her lip. The towering—machine?—turns her to her side and suddenly she's vomiting out liquid, emptying her stomach and lungs and she's invaded by the nauseating stench and taste of something like formaldehyde. The air, at least, should be sweet, but it's just bitterly cold, and she's already sick of the gasping and twitching. One of the gloves tries to clear her face and she recoils from the feel of ice on her mouth.

Sensation for the moment is like a flashbulb, she's taking in everything at once. Pain in her joints and spine; distorted synthetic speech looping around her ears, the crackle of broken glass that's sliced her arms and legs-the bitter freeze that condenses her breath, the bright light of the room, the dark shadow trapped in the corner with white slits for eyes. Feeling like she's made of gelatin, drenched, upset, spewing cords, burning alive on her insides, smelling disinfectant and blood, copper and salt already on her tongue when she gnashes and cuts her cheeks in paroxysms of confusion and neurological jolts. The astronaut has to hold her down for a moment, and then everything inside of her goes very quiet.

Her head lolls back a little with the feel of one glove in support of her weak neck, the other under her knees and both lifting her high into the air, cooling her further. She gurgles, working her jaw, managing only to grasp the viewing window with her palm and leave her fingermarks on it before drowning in the encroaching black.

* * *

The ice man that looks like an astronaut is courteous enough to close her eyes for her whenever she should fall unconscious. She's not sure exactly how long she's been here now, lying on an operating table with a glazed look in her eyes and an all-consuming lethargy. Time doesn't move at the same pace anymore, with her slipping in and out of something like the dreamless sleep of a coma.

It's a feeling of being pumped full of Novocain all over. The pain is gone, but it's like she's floating around in someone else's body. A few minutes are spent inspecting her arm, looking on in amazement as she controls the erratic, weakened muscles but feeling no sensation whatsoever from the skin. Her wrists are skeletal. Her breath is a cloud. There's an IV in the crook of her elbow. It's fascinating. She's always found the human body to be fascinating. She can lie there for hours flexing her thin, pale fingers, thinking about tendons and nerves with no concern for what is over one foot from her operating table.

The ice man is more scenery than anything else, like a doctor or captor. He has a pair of enormous red eyes and will occasionally pause to stroke her cheek with a gloved hand or whisper something through a poor speaker that makes up his mouth, gazing down at her miserably, but doesn't seem to do much other than work in the background or take notes on her condition. He is slow and deliberate, attempting to maintain a clinical veneer without thought or feeling beyond the task at hand, but she catches him cursing himself every so often when he thinks she's asleep, and decides there is something other than calm on his mind. He's a bit of an artist, ice sculptures of a woman dotting the landscape of the lab, in various poses and outfits, pantomiming many different winter scenes. He improves on them occasionally, almost like in a trance, murmuring to himself. Perhaps most people would be put off by the temperature he keeps the place so they don't melt. It doesn't bother her much. She _likes_ snow. It spoke to her of memories too far out of reach, peace and harmlessness. Besides, she can't even address him when her lips won't cooperate and her mouth is hooked up to oxygen tubes, though she sometimes reaches for him when he's leaning over her. The tactile sensation of his fingers on her arm as he gently pushes her away is noticeably absent.

Her mind is a fog. Or haze? Her legs won't respond, and she can only flex her thin fingers half of the time she's awake now. Various thoughts drift through her mind, but she can't seem to focus on any one idea, concept, or memory, so they all stay about the same distance away from her. There are assorted faces, yes, and abstract fears in the pit of her stomach. It said to her that time was passing, albeit in loops and spindles over any coherent line. Any time the vague anxiety grows, and she becomes too agitated, the ice man comes over with a syringe and a few murmured apologies, and she feels a calming cold spread in her veins through the skin of her neck; the pleasant delirium returns.

Another man is there once when she wakes after a few repetitions of this, with a round face, a puggish nose, receding grey hair and dark blue eyes that glance in her direction every so often, despite his attempts to focus on his work. Occasionally, she _is _his work, and when he checks her pulse or refills her IV, she fixes him with a glassy stare, the corners of her mouth tilted ever so slightly upward. She's remembering something.

After a moment he drops her wrist and growls under his breath, "Cut it out."

She coughs a laugh into her breathing tube. He blanches. He's clearly not made of ice like her doctor. There's a certain familiarity to him all the same though, so she knows for sure now that there's a life outside the lab lost somewhere in her head that involved other people. But she can't ask him about that, and decides to just stare and watch him react, call to the ice man and ask him to put her under again. "I can't do this with her staring at me like that." The creature nods in his solemn way and obliges, and the thin metal of the syringe kills the memories she'd been collecting so far.

* * *

The next time she wakes up on that operating table, it feels like someone opened her skull and did a fair amount of poking and prodding around inside of it with a butcher's knife. Some of her hair is crusted over with blood, and her back is extremely sore—someone ripped open her spine as well. Everything she sees is blurred, and she's looking up into two large, shiny red eyes on a face cast in shadow.

Goggles. They're not eyes, they're red goggles.

The man in the cold suit pulls back somewhat when he sees her awaken. Wordless, he moves out of her line of sight for a moment, footsteps thudding heavily on the tile, leaving her wondering if such a strange, alien figure had really been there in the first place. She pulls up her arm into view and looks over her wrist, feeling the protest of her tired muscles and the twitching of her fingers, having difficulty keeping her mind clear with the spindles of pain emanating from the long chain of vertebrae in her back. She growls somewhere in her cord filled throat and clutches her temples as a fresh wave of pain rolls through her body.

What _happened?_

The last clear memory is of the condominium that she shares with Victor, going to bed while he's out at work because her legs had failed her again. Everything after that is a confused blur of motion and voices, his telling her something, her feeling cold, tired, a little deranged…

She squints and tries to focus through the slow progression of hyperventilation and anxiety. He'd come back at some point in the night—and it _was _at night, she'd slept fitfully through the day—and woken her up, told her they were going somewhere. Where? Her memory blurs through the car ride—all she'd known was that she was tired. She hadn't felt right, it was like she was half gone and the piece left behind thought it was a dream. But it hadn't been, because she wasn't in that dream anymore, she was _here_ wherever here was, because Victor had taken her somewhere and told her he'd cure her, and she'd replied, delirious with the pain and weakness of the last few months into her body's decay, that she wasn't sick…

The man (not the product of a damaged brain but real) is putting another oxygen mask over her face, except instead of just oxygen he turns a valve and she's breathing in nitrous oxide.

Gothcorp. Victor had taken her to Gothcorp after the building closed down and there was nobody left inside, he'd been afraid to turn on any of the lights and refused to explain the tears trickling down his cheek. And she had asked, over and over, where they were and why he was so upset. Either he really hadn't answered, or every explanation went somewhere just behind her hearing as she stumbled into him, balance no longer a skill she possessed. …But this place, with the odd ice statues decorating every corner, humming medical machinery and her breath condensing a few inches above her mouth, doesn't look or feel anything like Gothcorp.

Maybe the room could look something like the lab in the basement where she'd ended up that night, if it was smaller with more failed projects in the closet. But none of the employees would have put up with the AC running full blast, especially not Victor because he hated the cold so much though he denied it, he would pretend to love it so he could go with her on her walks, but he wouldn't do that for a soulless company, no...

Oh, so this is why they call it laughing gas. She feels so _giddy_ and relaxed now. The pain is trying to dampen her mood, but it can't touch her. _What _pain?

But no, no, the composition of the room is all wrong. Where had they gone after the lab? This place doesn't look anything like Gothcorp, and the man running the equipment doesn't look anything like Vi—…Although…

The gloved hands turn her head onto the side while she weakly grumbles in protest, the troubling thought forgotten. A sharp, painful pinprick stabs into the back of her neck, and her muscles shiver reflexively before growing numb. Before losing her ability to move altogether she looks back up at him, face obscured by the angry red goggles and voice distorted so that it almost doesn't sound like he's saying "Sleep well, my love" as she fades in unconsciousness, but something unintelligible and possibly cruel. He looks like something inhuman, but he's smoothing her hair down, brushing it out of her face, the same way that Victor did when she was trembling in fever and unable to even pull of the web of blankets she'd awoken in. He's speaking to her just as Victor did, soft and rambling murmurs of loosely connected poetic phrases meant for her. He's looking at her like Victor did, quietly desperate and adoring like it was the last time he'd ever see her. It was that frequently guilty, self-hating look that she'd always try to smear off of his face with her lips or fingers, the one that surfaced so often when she was ill…

She slips away thinking that he made that exact expression when he placed her inside the cold coffin of glass that night. But this was not then, and she wonders where she's going now so that he has to wear a suit like that and why she needs to be unzipped like a ragdoll receiving repairs.

* * *

**I originally intended this to be part of a larger story, but until I've figured out what that actually _is_ I guess this can just be considered a one shot.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Alright, well, I guess I'm winging it a bit.**

* * *

Nora was up at midnight in a cold sweat, shivering. The hair in her face had begun to scratch, and her back was no longer aching in that pleasant, relaxed way it had when she first lay down. Her heart was pounding away in her ribcage, and her body was rooted in place like someone had strapped her to a table.

And then it was if they had let go while she was straining to move, and her legs tangled in the sheets; she hit the hard wooden floor and woke up her fading bruises.

The doctors said she was just adjusting. That there was a period after sitting for a while where arms and legs fell asleep, and that was basically their gross simplification of what was happening to her all hours of her life now.

The building shifted a bit and she lay there while her limbs trembled uncontrollably, listening to it. It sounded like heavy, thudding footsteps. The winter wind sounded like synthetic breathing.

She didn't want to adjust, she didn't want to be so painfully aware of herself and everything else, she wanted to glide over a frozen lake and never feel the cold water under the ice.

She'd woken up too early, and now she couldn't get back to sleep.

Still in her nightgown, she pulled on the largest coat she could find in the closet Wayne Enterprises had so thoughtfully stocked for her and only just remembered that it was freezing outside and that maybe she wanted to wear some pants, too. She tried to be as quiet as she could in case anyone else was sleeping, feeling like a ghost as she slipped out of the apartment and into the street.

The pavement was wet; Gotham was terrible at doing winter properly. There were puddles of ice water where the city had tried to make a decent snowfall before giving up and just raining instead. The incandescent streetlamps only made her look jaundiced and cast strange shadows over the rest of the block. She knew the way just fine, and undaunted by the dark she let her legs carry her.

But after a few hours of standing outside the police station she didn't end up going in. Her fingers had gone numb by the time she realized that, standing on the sidewalk while night owls edged around her and her knees locked in place. There was a library open nearby. Feeling guilty of something, she slipped inside to warm up, wincing a little as her muscles twinged.

It was mostly empty. The librarian was off at the side organizing some checked in books, from what she could make out, and their bell was broken, so nobody came to see who'd come in. That was fine. She stumbled over the carpet in a bit of a daze, wondering if she'd somehow brought the cold in with her; for a moment it seemed to possessively cling to any uncovered skin.

Not feeling much like going home, she glanced around for their news section. The execs at Wayne Enterprises had called in a psychiatrist or two to make sure she _adjusted_ well to being unfrozen; one of them had suggested she catch up on the last eight years to acclimate herself. She was certain that he meant things like business, sports, movies, the newest president, that sort of thing—normal people concerns.

Unfortunately, Gotham had an abundance of very sad news. It would be depressing if she wasn't half asleep for much of her research, and skimming the articles for one name in particular so as to gloss over all of the _other _cases of murder, carnage, white collar crime and insanity (and thereby, she suspected, completely ignoring the purpose of the exercise entirely).

She'd found an article on the accident. Not much else. Gothcorp had gone bankrupt, though, which was…nice.

The lights flickered too much in this library. Made her eyes twitch. It was probably better in the day, when sunlight came in through the windows and lit up at least a few of the shadows the shelves cast, but now every corner was practically black with the night. Her gaze wandered through the various genre labels, the nonfiction section bleaker than the rest and somewhat empty.

Hm.

A door in the far left wall read, "Media Lab" in flat black letters. Perhaps they archived all the news stories in there. She crept over, keeping quiet, and carefully turned the knob. The hinges didn't squeak.

It was even darker in there. The fluorescent rods in the ceiling suggested it was supposed to be bright, but they were so dim they may as well have been off. A row of computers marked the first half of the room, filed papers the other and a microfilm reader for even older records. A VCR and projector sat way in the back for any taped programs, which she hadn't seen in the library near her apartment.

The room felt a little lonely. Perfect for research. She glanced around for a light switch, unwilling to put her eyes through hours of reading in the dark.

One of the shadows shifted and she realized she wasn't alone.

"Oh."

The soft gasp alerted the room's only other occupant to her presence, a pair of stark white eyes turning her way. The stranger was wearing a dark costume with traces of body armor and the insignia of a bat centered right on the chest, looking like the most terrifying and possibly craziest person in Gotham, to Nora's eyes. A long cape almost touched the floor where a pair of dirt encrusted combat boots stood, legs bent a little so as to give the appearance of a feral crouch. A small flashlight was in one hand, an open newspaper with pages spilling out in the left.

They stared at each other for the longest time, both in stunned silence and the one under a gruesome, glaring mask accentuated by a pair of pointy ears, before the Bat in black and red spoke up through her painted lips.

"…My supercomputer's in the shop."

Nora blinked.

"I haven't shorted out your brain, have I?" The Batwoman threw away the sports section and folded up the newspaper she was examining until it fit to some degree in her belt. "How about you pretend that I was never here, and we can all get what we came for?"

"Are you a vampire bat?"

It was the first thing that came to mind, and Nora was rewarded by brief surprise on what could be seen of the woman's face before the stoic, set mouth returned.

She cleared her throat. "It just seems to be the look you've got." A pause. "Pale skin. All the red. Cape and cowl."

"Vampires are old hat." When she walked, she made no sound at all, and stalked over to the doorway where Nora happened to be frozen in place. Her head tilted in a manner that, on anyone else, might not have appeared to be demented, sadistic curiosity. "Why? Do vampires scare you?"

The woman looked like a powerhouse. Nora was sure she could grind her into a pulp with just the edge of one red boot, if she wanted to.

"Oh, I'm just—I'm just like everyone in Gotham. I'm not—not scared of you, just scared of people in masks."

She smiled like a ghoul. Nora brought her head down so that when she shook, it was at the sight of her own feet, and by the time she brought it back up she was gone.

"…Just seems like they're everywhere, now."

_Can't even go to the library without bumping into one._

She snickered and felt kind of like a maniac. Her body refused to be still, so she spent the next half-hour making sure every corner and dark area was completely empty, and then barring the door with an uncomfortable metal chair.

Her eyes kept wandering over to the projector at the other side of the room as she rifled through back editions of the last ten years. It took about 3 hours to find anything like what she was looking for, and only two of five articles made the front page for pictures. Each took ten minutes to read, but she spent another twenty giving a glazed look towards the grainy black and whites of frostbitten corpses. By the time she looked up, neck hurting from the weight of her skull, it was still nighttime, and the room temperature had dropped a few degrees.

She bit her lip. It took 2 hours of speeding through news specials on the VCR before she stopped on a Vicki whatshername standing in a flurry and interviewing victims. A few cried. Swore revenge. She fast forwarded to the crime scene shots, and kept her eyes open so she could see every detail, blood mingled with snow and rescue teams still cutting people free from their black limbs.

…The tape clicking as it hit the end of the film shook her out of her stupor. The light reflecting off of the screen bathed her face in sky blue, and her anxious twitching had stopped. It took a moment to realize where she was and why her back hurt.

She set the rewind button on the VCR and turned off the projector. All of the newspapers that she'd been rifling through littered the floor and desks; she wondered why she'd left such a mess. The pages fell open as she folded them up, and her eyes immediately focused in on the still photos accompanying the articles about him.

It didn't hurt as much to look at them a second time.

Maybe that was her plan. To be desensitized.

On the way out, slipping the chair out from under the door handle, she took the sports section of the Batwoman's newspaper off the floor, neatly folded it up and slid it into her pocket. It was snowing and dim with clouds when she got outside.


	3. Bridge

The first one is packing stolen cargo in a uniform that isn't warm enough for the weather, visibly shivering and slowly turning blue and numb. The snow makes a light dusting of his hair—he went to the trouble of stealing the jacket but didn't see the hat as being a priority. He likely wishes he'd possessed more foresight.

He stops, takes a moment to rub his arms, to rest a moment. If he isn't in decent condition at all times, he can expect to be tackled by the first do-gooder, police officer or no, that thinks it's worthwhile to take them down for the larceny.

She adjusts the zoom lens in her mask, brushing her fingers as lightly as she can for the sensitive equipment. It's boring to watch, but this is the closest she can force herself to get to a night off.

The man lets out a cloud of steamed breath and turns to his friend who comes crunching through the dirt and iced street. "Whatcha got for me?"

"Oh, not much…" The other sits down to make it clear he has no intentions of helping, leafing through a battered appointment book that was likely found in the trash. He's missing some of his lip, and slurs a little when he speaks. "With all the flying rodents starting to crack down people are getting tight lipped about what they need done."

The man responds in a harsh bark. "I don't need a disclaimer, man, just tell me what you've got written out."

"Okay, so there's an official notice been sent out, a miss Dr. Friitawa is working out a new chemical and needs hands to get the supplies." She tunes in with her radio.

"An _official notice_? Since when do people like us send out official notices?"

"She ain't like _us_, she's a doc."

Friitawa. She wracks her brain for what she knows of Gotham's non-supernatural underworld. Linda Friitawa with the alias of "Fright", generally falls under Batman's territory but obscure enough that any one of his other associates might choose to intervene instead.

But the case is worth running into interference. She stays and listens, easing off of her protesting legs and making a mental note to have Firebird do scouting work in Black Mask's territory.

"What kinda supplies are we going after?" He starts packing again, the muscles in his arms clearly straining with a workload heavier than he's used to, stretching out the tattoo of a snake she knows is under his sleeve.

"Hell, I don't know. Probably something in Ace Chemicals, what does it matter?"

"It sounds too high risk."

He's the type of criminal that hears about Gotham's more eccentric residents and opts instead to eke out a living with meager jobs like stealing a truck of silver eating utensils.

"That's your problem. No ambition or nothin'. You gotta _apply _yourself."

"Apply myself to another ten years in prison?"

The friend kicks at sludge and checks his appointment book again, squinting at his own bad handwriting. "Well, word has it Frosty is switching bases and needs some muscle to move his equipment," he offers finally.

"And get _frostbite_? No thanks." It seems the one packing boxes, despite appearances, isn't as desperate for work as the initial impressions implied.

The other one snaps, throwing down the book. "Alright, if you can't handle a little _cold_—"

"I need my legs. I like my legs. Did you hear about the chick that lost her leg? He's a stone cold bastard and he's the kinda guy that Batman shows up to smack around while we're scrambling for cover from one of his freakin' helpers." He's shouting now, perhaps in frustration of the frostbitten air around him. She recalls every epithet that she's overheard people use precisely because they blamed the man for the weather, and a small smirk twists her lip.

"Alright, alright, settle down." The one with the book is doing his best, but the packer is off on a roll, now.

"Whatever happened to all the _normal _bosses in Gotham? Why are we scrounging for jobs from these costumed freaks?"

"Because the costumed freaks got rid of all the normal people?"

Another smile threatens to break her set expression. The night hasn't been going well, but there are still small amusements to be found.

"This…'Friitawa' chick, she works for Black Mask, right?"

"Sure. I guess he's not as freakish as you can get, right?" The one with the appointment book shakes his head. "I mean, we'll be doing our business with _her_, though, and I think she's a ghostface, so…"

Now she almost laughs. That would be an embarrassing mistake.

"Really? We have a crocodile man running around and you don't like _albino people_?"

That isn't fair—she's seen at least three crocodile men but has yet to see anyone with genuine pigmentation deficiencies. Statistically speaking, in Gotham Fright is more unusual than anyone genetically altered in a freak lab accident.

"Shut up man, I've heard some freaky sh—"

Something metal rattles on the other side of the courtyard, and she looks sharply at the source, keeping herself down for when they wildly start swinging their gaze around the perimeter. …Whatever it was has moved out of sight. The two figures are startled into crouched stances for a solid two minutes, not even daring to relax until their heart rates begin to slow.

Moments like these help her appreciate the power of a mask and the symbol she wears on her chest.

"Can't be the Bat," One of them mutters, panic still evident in his voice. "Bat doesn't make noise."

She doesn't relax like they do, muscles still tensed in anticipation for what she knows won't show. They are right about one thing, but all that means is that the chances that it is simply another vigilante to contend with are greatly diminished.

"Yeah. Yeah, Bat don't make noise."

None of them do.

Whatever it was has ruined her reconnaissance. They remain tight lipped for fear of eavesdroppers for the rest of the evening, and she leaves with no more information then she started with.

* * *

She took a rag and started to soak some of the extensive pallor off her cheeks.

"Now you only look _mostly _anemic."

The chuckle that had been held under all night finally bubbled out. It was a little less worn out than usual. The wig came off next, her real hair coming out in a mess of strands.

"Aaand now you've got wig hair."

"Don't push it."

"Sorry." Bette stretched and her arms cracked. "Does this mean I get to patrol now?"

"The sun's up."

"_What?_" She jumped from her chair at the desk and ran to the window; sure enough, the sun had started to come up over the horizon, dousing the night in pinks and oranges. "You made me spend all night _doing research_?"

"Yes I did."

"Great. Which didn't help at all, by the way. I didn't learn anything new. There's only so much you can glean from news articles of people going berserk in a place like Gotham, you know."

Kate started to change out of her costume, looking over the newspapers and books Bette had been reading. "Then you didn't look hard enough."

"And what did your night of skulking dig up?"

"Dr. Friitawa is confirmed—whatever she's working on, it's important and she's doing it by herself. Due to her past associations with Scarecrow I'd wager it's toxin related." Kate slipped on a black, backless tux, never dropping her Batwoman voice. "You'll be investigating that tomorrow night."

"Fantastic, more poison to deal with." Bette gave her a pointed look. "You're not going to shower?"

"I don't have time. While you're out, keep an eye on Mr. Freeze." She started to apply perfume to mask the smell of spending all night cracking skulls with her boot and landing in dumpsters. "He's transferring locations and has a warehouse in the area."

"Mr. Freeze? No problem, I'm flame themed."

"Don't start anything. Don't even let him see you."

"I won't." The door slamming was the only noise she made as she left. Bette yawned and collapsed back into her chair. "Bye Kate…"

* * *

**I'm really sorry that practically nothing happens here, the next chapter will be longer and less superficial.**


End file.
